That Geeky Christian

Last month Christian video game publisher Digital Praise released “Guitar Praise” a Christian alternative to the wildly popular “Guitar Hero.”

The Good

Guitar Praise plays much the same as Guitar Hero.  The guitar is the familiar 5 button (green, yellow, red, blue, orange), strum, whammy bar style that we’ve all become accustomed to.  It’s also wireless which is a big plus.

You’ll find game play to be similar, yet easier than Guitar Hero.  For instance, you can hit the note at a slightly off interval and still get credit, but points vary for “Good”, “Great”, and “Perfect” notes.  Also, in no level is there a “hammer on” or a “hammer off.”  That’s not to say the play is not challenging.  As a matter of fact, the first song I failed was the warm up song for hard!

Of course, what most people want to know is did the makers of the game actually get any decent songs?  Well, of course, that’s a matter of opinion, but from this Christian Rock fan, they did a pretty decent job of it.  You’ll find songs by Flyleaf, Pillar, Skillet, Family Force 5 and more!  For those of you more into Contemporary Christian Music the game has plenty of that also, with a few praise songs mixed in for good measure.  It also has an option to display the lyrics during game play in order to reinforce the messages in the songs.

The Bad

The game is only for Windows or Macintosh systems, and not available on any console platform.  This would at least be an opportunity to enhance the interface of the game, but I found that to be clunky. The game is kind of hard to maneuver around.  The player has to search through the menus to figure out how to change difficulty level as well as how to play more than the first song that pops up.

Also, if you begin a game without saving a profile, all of your progress is lost.  In Guitar Hero that may not be so bad since unlocking all songs in easy allows you to play them in hard.  Guitar Praise, on the other hand makes you unlock the songs by level.  This hurts one of the dynamics this game is actually well suited for, youth groups.  If you bring this to your youth group you are going to want to have plenty of songs unlocked, and in order to appease more advanced players, this could take hours.

The screen has changeable backgrounds, and a two player mode, however, it always looks as though both players are on the screen since the section for the second fretboard never goes away.  Options to use your “talent points” (money is not earned, only talent points) are limited, though I suspect these could easily be enhanced in the future.

The Bottom Line

Digital Praise really missed an opportunity to expand the reach of their game  by not trying to attach it to any of the three major consoles.  Even if they couldn’t get a deal for a Guitar Hero expansion with Activision, most people don’t want to play these type games on a computer.  An expansion would expand the reach of the game, and break out of the “Christian Bubble” so to speak.

That said, it’s an apt game, and great for bringing to a youth ministry.  Most teens want to play this type of game right now, and most parents have objections to some of the songs on the mainstream games.  This game, if used properly, could help bring teens to a church setting.  Youth ministries could have battle nights, etc.

Overall Guitar Praise is a fun Guitar Hero style game, and with the prospect of expansions being released online in the future, could get even better.  I hope to see more and even better songs, and should a second version be released, it would be nice to have a more user friendly interface.  Overall I would reccommend it to anyone who has objections to the mainstream guitar games, but would still like to have the experience.

Filed under: Software